Anyway, I got some useful comments on it, but I never really did much with it.  Specifically, I completely failed to take the advice of photographing objects in normal sunlight, because Oregon doesn’t really get much sunlight.

About a month ago, though, I ran across some instructions on building a lightbox specifically for this sort of thing, and decided that, darn it, this time I was going to actually work at getting some better photographs done.

As promised, it was very quick and cheap to put together.  I spent a massive eleven dollars on the foam board and $28 on four task lamps.

Anyway, here’s what the thing looks like.  It’s pretty massive and not terribly attractive, but it doesn’t have to be.

Anyway, I put the same Shadow Lady figure I used last time into the box and took a test photo.

For reference, here’s the photo from November 2007, taken without a flash:

And here it is in the lightbox:

Obviously something was awry.

I did some digging into the menus of my DSC-W55 and found that I could manually set the white balance.  For the record, you need to set the camera to “Program Auto” before you even get the menus where you can adjust stuff like white balance.

I picked “Incandescent”, to somewhat better results:

Now, this still isn’t perfect, because I’m losing a fair bit of detail, but it’s much improved.  I think changing out the light bulbs I’m using might help with that; I’m using kind of a mixed up set of “what I had handy”

For the heck of it, I photographed a few other figures I’d gotten recently.  This is where the post goes from useful to straight-up camera whoring, so you can just close your browser and save yourself some pain.

A Bome figure of Lum from Urusei Yatsura:

A Taiga from Toradora; I think this was a UFO catcher figure so it’s a little less detailed.  It also photographed really darkly, which is something I need to work on.

A rather nice Lalah figure from ToLOVEる; again a little darker than I’d like.

Oh, and these two girls who you may remember from this post:

Slightly different angle:

So, my photography problems are sort-of-solved for the moment, though I’ll probably tweak the light a bit.  Now I just need to figure out where to store a rather fragile 20″ by 30″ by 20″ box.

I’m not a big comics fan, and not a habitual con-goer, but I tagged along anyway. We collected a third friend, who’s recently gone through a major comic book burnout, on the way.

So, count so far: Three people, of whom only one actually buys comics on a regular basis.

I haven’t been to the local comic book show in quite a while – quite possibly not since 1995. The venue hasn’t changed much – it’s still a bunch of folding tables laid out in the dungeon-like basement of the local convention center, and the overall air of “please buy this crap so I don’t have to carry it home” hasn’t changed much, either. I found that I could get offered an instant discount at most tables just by picking something up, looking at it, and putting it back down.

I had to buy SOMETHING after paying seven bucks to walk in the door, and I didn’t really feel like comics shopping, so I wound up buying a couple of Monsieur Bome figures.

One I quite like:

The Bome figures have been around for quite some while, and this “toramusume” is the second in the series. It might be a little overdone in terms of sheer number of moe fetishes, but I thought it was a really well made figure. Detailed, a neat dynamic pose, and surprisingly stable thanks to a solid base and some clever balance work.

Then there’s this:

Misty May is Gainax’s over-the-top parody of magical girls show heroines, as seen in Otaku no Video, and since I was going on about Otaku no Video a few days ago, I felt compelled to buy this figure when I saw it.

Having brought it home and put it on the shelf, though, I’m kind of regretting that. It’s a well made figure, sure, but, well, the pose is, uh, well, I’m actually a little ashamed to have it on display. I didn’t think that possible, but apparently even I have my limits.

Here’s a couple of examples, in this case using a “Shadow Lady” statue. I really don’t remember much about the Shadow Lady manga… there was something about a shy girl with a magical compact, who could use it to transform into a not-so-shy thief who also liked to wear a lot of skin-tight outfits and had a little devil sidekick. Also, I think she may have been in a love triangle or two, depending on which form she was in.

We’re not talking high concept literature here, but I remember it being a pretty fun read, and of course it had that glorious Masakasu Katsura (I”s, Video Girl Ai, Wingman, so on and so forth) artwork.

I got a bit off track there. Anyway, it was a nice looking figure and had lots of detail to it so it seemed like it would be a good test subject.

Here’s the Shadow Lady figure using the camera’s built-in flash:

This turned out kind of washed-out. I feel like I lost details, and it casts a really harsh shadow. It LOOKS plastic. Of course, it IS plastic, but that’s not the point.

And here’s the figure without using the flash, but with putting a light behind the camera aimed at the figure.

Much less washed-out and I’ve lost the harsh shadows, but at the same time, there’s a lot of grain and the figure is trying to blend in to the background.

So I’m a bit stuck. I think that losing the flash was definitely the way to go, it might just be that I need more ambient light to make that work.

Click picture for bigger version.

You know, when I was taking this, I didn’t even notice the nekomimi-Rei figure behind her. Double fan-service!